The Wind Plays a Twisted Flute

I

When told a twisted flute cannot carry

A dulcet tune, that we are all hollow now, try as we might

To ignore distant calling chimes. Slow. Quiet,

Always chiming, are knell's bells, often only heard, once

Age firmly presses her hands over our ears to say, in a foreign dialect

And deep timbre:

Your instrument is broken, your music was borrowed

Now pour it back, back into the scalding pit

Sometimes good people have to die. And I wonder where our voices go,

What words' umbilical cords cut loose too soon, snapped like harp strings never

Caressed to fill a room, and it is in those moments somber, that we must remember

II

That we are a thousand sunsets behind mastery

Remember that we have not yet grasped the missing brass Key

To pry open cages carved from cold, inside which

A legion of songbirds linger aflutter

Patiently petrified in amber caverns of our

Caving chests. Sometimes good people

Have to die— sometimes the looming bell brands our turn

Before these swollen hands can climb up and chip at,

Make a small dent in Oak's numb and rugged skin

Riddled with deep fissures formed over generations

Over generations over generations of us droplets

Falling soundless from sky's shrouded nests. We are

Of the same world as rainwater glinting

For a second

Inside soil's stiff body, every root is a vein

Waking with a thirsting, scavenging finger, before it's our finger

III

Lifting up and tapping at Lantern's fogged glass.

Peek inside,

And find a fickle wisp-like flicker, whose fervent flames we amass

With sage breath: these are our spirits spilled from the lungs

Snapping and hissing

Swallowed shrills of those living—

In the rings of yesterday

O we could be so many things!

A lament of the ages, a collective chant to the envy of Calliope

Let us embark to climb up Life's steep Oaken slope

Let us, without instrument,

Hum hushed hymns of Hope

IV

When stood beneath pillar's towering shade, we may

Quiver— though never

Dip or wilt our heads in a frown

We are lightwood, sliced and strung

Out of her very own belly, arrows'

Sharp teeth seething

And ablaze

With ambitions to rain hail higher and higher

Than—

Our aim,

Is where perched reigns, the Elder in her

Wreath-crown. Up here

We taste the crisp coat

Of breeze without tongue, up here

We can hear dear squelched mouths

V

Of chirping choirs. When, unannounced!

A hazy wraith charges through our midst,

In his wake a whirlpool nearly spins us in a twist

(Without a muffled pardon, never did he speak)

And in his temper, in his tantrum—

Whisks children sap-green across

Into a swollen creek. A handful of acorns makes a forest and

Do look at them, unripe, sailing away.

A chilling blast drapes like a trailing

Snowcloak fastened around Boreas,

Culprit Wind, spawn sprung out the desolate North.

Each sweep of his robe's sleeve ushers in

A cold blow, a clenched fist of liquid nitrogen surging

Through our chests. To prod to rattle to clatter

And incite brittle earthenware-bones

We are predisposed to fracture (tremor enough

You crack open flocks trapped in the snapped calyx ribcage).

Until all surrounding foliage, fluttering defiantly

Forfeit. Shedding leaf by leaf by leaf in unison,

Do listen to them, relinquish their rasping rage

VI The first nameless leaf to bend forward, sways the rest (Their names lost to Age, known only by those dearest). Then all trees are rustled bare, all trees plunge To their knees In silent abdication, in a firmly rooted bow- Barring us, us grown valiant with songbirds by our side Small as us, Resist the lulling graze of his surly stride In a sudden shriek, catch Wind By his pipes Demand he utter more Than a languid lasting sigh— O Quiet Wind, you've always been— Without music Without friend Play this twisted flute, imbued with our howling fire Waft the songs of our breathing Fleeting crowds— to billow and stir The onlooking Wistful clouds Let us Embark to climb up Life's steep Oaken slope Let us, without instrument, eternal— Hum hushed hymns of Hope.